This delicious and sweet pear cake with silky, creamy custard filling is to die for. The recipe is very easy and uses the most basic techniques to make the cake batter and the filling. Just spend some time arranging the pears on top and you’ll have the most amazing showstopper to wow everyone.
To make a delicious and impressive cake, you don’t need to slave in the kitchen for the whole day. The only thing that’s really needed is fresh, delicious and juicy produce – and everything will work out just fine.
This pear cake delivers exactly that. Juicy and sweet pears bring all the subtle, fruity flavours to this cake. After you combine them with silky, smooth custard, you’ve made yourself a real treat that won’t take more than an hour and a half to make.
You know I love elegant and really impressive food – I eat with my eyes. But sometimes you need that humble, soft and very homey dessert. This pear cake with custard is exactly like that, but also boasts a touch of finesse on top – elegantly arranged pears with a crust of burned sugar.
So, let’s make these dark and long evenings into something exciting and sweet. Also, if you’d like, you can swap pears for juicy red apples – delicious!
Ingredients Needed to Make Pear Cake
For this cake, you’ll need less than 10 ingredients. You can probably find almost all of them in your cupboards right now. Here’s the full list:
- Pears – can you imagine a pear cake without pears? Of course not! I used juicy Conference pears, but you can use any over-ripe pears.
- Butter – unsalted, room temperature butter is the must-have ingredient in this recipe.
- Caster sugar – bringing all the sweetness.
- Eggs – similar advice as for the butter – use room temperature, fresh eggs.
- Plain flour – you can swap to gluten free flour if needed.
- Ground almonds – I love, love, love adding ground nuts to my bakes. This helps create a moist and delicious cake.
How to Make Pear Cake
This recipe is really easy even with zero baking experience. I promise, you’ll nail it on your first attempt! To prepare the fluffiest cake, you’ll need to follow these steps:
- Beat the butter with caster sugar. Don’t rush this step. This results in a fluffy and soft sponge. If you under beat or overbeat the ingredients, you’ll finish with a dense and low cake. It might take around 5 minutes to reach a fluffy and pale butter consistency.
- Add the eggs and combine everything. Your batter might look like it’s about to split, but don’t worry, everything is good.
- Sift the flour in a separate small bowl. Add ground almonds, baking powder and salt. Mix them together.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix everything together.
- Add half of the batter into a cake tin. On top add the custard layer
- On top arrange the sliced pears and more custard.
- Finish the cake with the remaining batter and sliced pears
That’s it. These are the steps to make the most delicious cake.
Try out these delicious recipes as well:
Lemon and Pistachio Cake with Lemon Curd
Nectarine Crumble with Blueberries
Zingy Lemon Bars with Meringue
Recipe
Ingredients
Custard:
100ml double cream
300ml milk
40g caster sugar
2 egg yolks
50ml rum
1 tablespoon of cornstarch
Cake:
200g room temperature butter
100g caster sugar
3 eggs
200g plain flour
50g ground almonds
1 teaspoon baking powder
A pinch of salt
2 pears
Method
Prepare the custard:
- Add the double cream, milk and sugar into a saucepan. Gently bring the mixture to a boil.
- In a large bowl, whisk the egg yolks together with cornstarch.
- Take the milk mixture off the heat and very slowly, always whisking, pour this mixture into the eggs (this way you’ll avoid scrambled eggs).
- Pour the cream back into a saucepan, add a splash of rum and heat for 5 minutes (always stirring) until it starts firming.
- Pour the cream through a sieve to remove any lumps.
- Let it cool completely.
Make the cake:
- Beat the butter with caster sugar in a large bowl using an electric mixer for a couple of minutes, until you have a pale and smooth mix.
- Add the eggs and whisk until combined and smooth.
- In a separate small bowl, sift the flour, ground almonds, baking powder and salt.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients.
- Mix until the batter is smooth.
Arrange the cake:
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and line a round cake tin with a baking sheet.
- Peel and destone the pears. Cut them finely.
- Add the half the cake batter into your prepared tin.
- Add 1/3 of the custard on top of the cake batter, arrange half the pears on top.
- Add another 1/3 of the custard on top of the pears.
- Add the remaining half of the cake batter on top of the custard.
- Nicely arrange the remaining half of the sliced pears on top of the batter.
- Finish the cake with a tablespoon of caster sugar.
- Bake the cake in the oven for 45-50 minutes.
